The Transparency Manifesto

This page represents a collaborative effort to establish a working defining for "transparency" as it relates to business, and particularly business communication. Too many people believe transparency means "no secrets," but clearly organizations keep certain information -- yet-to-be-reported financial results, product plans, intellectual property -- close to the vest. So what, exactly, is transparency?

To add ideas/anecdotes/other, please email John C. Havens at johnchavens at yahoo dot com and ask for the edit password.

You can also email John or Shel Holtz (shel at holtz dot com) with any ideas/thoughts as well. And as stated below, please leave your name/contact info (here or email to John/Shel) so we can give you correct attribution for your ideas.

Transparency How To's

Part of the focus of this wiki is to define the actionable elements of an effective Transparency initiative. Please provide how to's below with justification for your ideas. If you'd like to leave your name/contact info after your addition, we'd love to include you in future iterations of this project with proper attribution.

John C. Havens:

If you're using an email group to help facilitate a live event, make the group absolutely closed to anyone not directly involved in planning the event UNLESS you're willing to consistently address issues that arise from outside the group.

Justification: While planning PodCamp NYC we initially had someone on our larger Google group post something out of context before the actual organizers had made a final decision on the subject in question. Although the blogger had some salient points, the timing was inappropriate and disrespectful to the organizers actually working to produce the event. By restricting the group after this happened to just the organizers, we were able to work through initial decisions as a team and announce them to the larger public via our main blog. Point being, we wanted to be transparent at all times, but not before there was an accurate and cohe4ive point to be transparent about. In my experience, this process worked well for future aspects of planning.